The travel expenses of Moroccan tourists abroad mobilize the monitoring services of the exchange office

New data mobilized the oversight services of the Exchange Office after notifications were received by European financial oversight services, specifically in Spain and France, which included accurate information about the growing expenses of Moroccan tourists using cash, which exceeded the value of the travel allowances authorized across the border points in Morocco and other countries. mentioned. It concerns huge amounts of money used to finance the purchase of jewelry, expensive watches, and accessories of high value.

Hespress learned from informed sources that members of the exchange office launched extensive investigations into statements about travel allocations transferred by Moroccans abroad in the context of short-term tourist trips, explaining that a number of suspects of smuggling money abroad through illegal channels were identified after verifying a discrepancy in value. The amounts declared to customs authorities, specifically at Mohammed V International and Marrakesh Menara airports, and the actual value of expenses made in cash, monitored by the Spanish and French financial control authorities.

The same sources reported that the notices received by the monitoring services of the Exchange Office included accurate information about suspicious internal transfers in Spain and France to Moroccans who have relations with the suspects, stressing that this data prompted the monitors to track the course of transactions of Moroccan tourists inside the Kingdom, especially bank transfers, ownership transfers and transfers. Assets, by relying on electronic information exchange channels with partner departments, as the audit aimed to verify that the value of the aforementioned transactions was transferred abroad through payment for the benefit of certain parties inside in exchange for receiving these transfers minus the commission abroad.

The Exchange Office has adopted important facilities over the past years with regard to personal travel allocations, which moved from 45 thousand dirhams to 100 thousand dirhams, and can increase by 30 percent of the income tax within the limits of 300 thousand dirhams, noting that these allocations remain subject to use in Occasions of traveling abroad, whether for the purpose of tourism, Umrah, Hajj, or for hospitalization, while the facilities also included raising the ceiling of annual transfers from people’s investments abroad to 200 million dirhams, in addition to keeping up with and encouraging innovative emerging companies working in modern technology, by raising allocations. E-commerce reached one million dirhams, and the possibility of making investments abroad.

The same sources added that in the process of auditing the transactions of the suspects inside Morocco, the observers of the exchange office used special information about the activity of brokers who are being investigated, working to facilitate the smuggling of money abroad, by paying the amounts desired to be transferred in cash to parties in the Kingdom, in exchange for receiving them abroad. By other parties after deducting the commission amounts, which are often high, while others resort to collecting part of the value of real estate sales completed in the Kingdom, not registered in the sales contracts, by the buyers themselves, but in Spain or France.